Veterans, elected officials and county roads discussed at meeting

At the March 11 Socorro County meeting, Julie Griego, county assessor, recommended that veterans check their notice values, scheduled to be mailed out on April 1, to ensure they receive their full $10,000 exemption.

“If you’re a veteran, let us know. Make sure you check with us on that exemption; we have people calling all day long on that,” Griego said.

Griego told the commission that veterans exemptions have increased from $2.3 million to $5.3 million.

“Then next year will be the disabled percentage. That’s going to be hard, but that’s going to be a percentage off of the value of the taxable value of the property. So you’re going to lose a lot more than what you’re losing here next year, because I think they’re anticipating something like 40,000 disabled veterans in New Mexico,” Griego said.

She also reported that the assessor’s office will start valuations this week.

“We have our guys out there checking in properties,” Griego said.

She advised people to contact her office if they are veterans or disabled veterans to verify their exemption status.

County maintained roads

Commissioner Danny Monette motioned to table the approval of the 2025 annual certified maintained mileage report for a March 25 regular meeting. He said it would give them time to hold a workshop with residents scheduled for 9 a.m. on Friday March 21 at the County Annex.

Appointed officials payments

At the meeting, the commission held a public hearing and debated an ordinance to provide benefits to appointed officials.

County Lawyer, Adren Nance said the ordinance would define appointed officials, allow them to participate in training and certification reward programs, and provide one-time payments for additional training ($250 and $500).

Lotrich said he strongly opposed the ordinance, arguing it would create a double standard and benefit only five individuals, not the full 103 county employees. He said it might open up other salary increases for appointed officials.

Michelle Paz, Socorro County clerk, said that the certifications take two to three years to complete, are time-consuming and that the past elected officials were receiving the payments.

The commissioners asked questions and discussed the importance of educating employees, the potential limitations of the current training opportunities, and concerns about fairness across different departments.

Lotrich proposed tabling the ordinance to develop a more “comprehensive” training program for all county employees. Board members Phillip Montoya, Joe Gonzales, Danny Monette, John Aguilar voted in favor and Craig Secatero voted against tabling the item.

County Fire Departments

During the Mangers report, Lotrich said they will need to start discussions on the “elephant in the room.”

“We’ve had a diminishing role and ability to attract volunteers that if we continue with just the volunteer program there with the County Fire Department, we’re going to be where we are now, and that means we have fires to where we are unstaffed. We don’t have the ability to send out full crews to these fires,” Lotrich said, “The department is facing challenges with diminishing volunteer roles and inability to staff full crews for fires.”

He acknowledged they need to plan for the future, he said a long-term goal is to transition to a hybrid system with both paid and volunteer firefighters.

Lotrich said he is working with the consolidated school district to potentially start a firefighter training program in high school. This would allow students to get their firefighter one certificate when they turn 18. He said the program would help, but it would take two to three years before they could use it to staff fire departments.

In other business, Lotrich reported on the San Antonio drainage project delay due to BLM land transfer, a transfer of donated supplies left over from COVID-19 to go to Puerto Seguro was approved and the contract for mental health services inside the detention center was also approved.

The next meeting was scheduled for 5 p.m. on March 25 at the County Annex.